In recent years, a remote conferencing system for conducting a remote conference with a remote location via a communications network such as the Internet has been prevalent.
With this type of remote conferencing system, in a meeting room with one of parties such as a participant involved in the remote conference, an image of the meeting room is shot and a voice such as a speech of the party in the conference is collected using a transmission terminal (a terminal apparatus) of the remote conferencing system, and the image and the voice are converted into digital data so as to be transmitted to a transmission terminal of a counterpart, the image data is displayed on a display (a display apparatus) and the voice data is output with a speaker of a meeting room of the counterpart, so that the conference between remote locations is carried out in a condition close to a real non-remote conference.
Now, there are increasing sales of the transmission terminal for this type of remote conferencing system in combination with the display as well as sales of only the transmission terminal as a single unit. Therefore, it has recently become possible to connect the display having various resolutions to the transmission terminal.
However, this type of transmission terminal is designed to have a fixed value such as a resolution of image data transmitted and received with other transmission terminals of a width of 1280 pixels and a height of 720 pixels (an aspect ratio of 16:9), so that there may occur inconvenience with displaying depending on the resolution of the display connected.
More specifically, there is a problem that, for displaying directly on the display with the resolution of image data left as it is, when the resolution in a width direction or a height direction is higher than a designed value, a portion of an image in (either one or both of) directions of the higher resolution is displayed as being chipped off, and an area to be displayed in the first place cannot be displayed, leading to reduced viewability. In particular, contents displayed by recent transmission terminals include displaying of auxiliary information such as an operating menu and an error message besides the image of the meeting room; there is a problem that, in the event an area displaying such auxiliary information is chipped off, the user cannot operate the transmission terminal or the user cannot determine a cause of an error.
Moreover, for displaying directly on the display with the resolution of the image data left as it is, there is a problem that, when the resolution in the width direction or the height direction is lower than the designed value, a blank area appears on which no image is displayed at one end or both ends of the image in (either one or both of) directions with the lower resolution, so that a screen is not effectively utilized.
Furthermore, there is a problem that, when the whole image is displayed and displaying is made such that the image is symmetrically reduced/enlarged such that at least one of the width direction or the height direction fits to a full size, if an aspect ratio differs from the designed value, a blank area appears in which no image is displayed at one end or both ends of the image in either the width direction or the height direction, so that the screen is not effectively utilized in a manner similar to what is described above.
Moreover, if the aspect ratio differs from the designed value, when the image is non-symmetrically reduced such that both the width direction and the height direction fit to the full size, the image is distorted, leading to reduced viewability.
On the other hand, Patent document 1 discloses a method of changing an aspect ratio of an image from 16:9 to 4:3 for the purpose of preparing an image for video conferencing. However, the disclosed method can only deal with a fixed case such that the aspect ratio of an input image is 16:9 and an aspect ratio of a display is 4:3, so that the above-described problem cannot be solved.
Moreover, Patent document 2 discloses one terminal receiving display capability information of another terminal, and the one terminal referring to the display capability information to convert an application data set of the one terminal to a display resolution of another terminal for the purpose of displaying a shared screen in real time in a data conferencing system. However, it does not take into account displaying of an operating menu, or distortion of displaying, so that the above-described problem may not be solved therewith.